Timeline for Is the 's' or the 'c' silent on scent?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 2, 2015 at 20:15 | comment | added | user230 | From a historical perspective, in words like scene and scintillate, the ‹c› originally represented a /k/ sound which is no longer pronounced, so it makes sense to think of it as silent. If you ignore that and look only at the sound-letter correspondence, then you can conclude ‹sc› is pronounced /s/, and then working from the other direction, you can say the same thing of ‹sc› in scent. That's a perfectly fine conclusion―but I don't think it's a historical conclusion. | |
| Jan 30, 2015 at 21:52 | comment | added | Ben Kovitz | I also take it as a digraph, analogous to scene, scintillate, scion, etc. I don't follow the historical argument for silent 'c': people added a 'c' relatively late, therefore they weren't treating 'sc' as a digraph? | |
| Sep 22, 2014 at 12:30 | comment | added | user230 | +1 This is a perfectly reasonable synchronic analysis, although diachronically I think it's best to say it's the 'c' that is silent. The word was originally spelled 'sent' and the 'c' was added at a later date without changing the pronunciation. | |
| Sep 22, 2014 at 12:11 | review | First posts | |||
| Sep 22, 2014 at 13:28 | |||||
| Sep 22, 2014 at 12:10 | history | answered | Julie | CC BY-SA 3.0 |